


Some Plants Move

by triggerswaggiehavoc



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Alternate Universe - Tattoo Parlor, Florist Jihoon, Flowers, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Needles, Tattoo Artist Josh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-21
Updated: 2017-09-21
Packaged: 2019-01-01 04:52:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12149007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggerswaggiehavoc/pseuds/triggerswaggiehavoc
Summary: Jihoon is a bitter florist. Joshua is a gentle tattoo artist. Somehow or other, they meet in a dream.





	Some Plants Move

He floats in like a dream.

Jihoon is adjusting one of the million displays of roses they have out for Valentine’s Day, muttering curses under his breath each time he nicks his finger on a thorn. He used to be so fond of this shop not two years ago, fresh and bright-eyed, but he's long since tired of it,  grown weary to the monotonous upkeep of a slow flower shop, the constant rearranging and recoloring and re-everything. Once upon a time, he'd been so taken with this scent, fresh and green, but now all he wants is to wash it out of his skin forever. A final pink rose completes the bouquet with prettily unfurled petals, and Jihoon wipes the water from his palms on his apron. He floats in like a dream.

This man makes no sound when he enters, almost no sound, not a peep save for the light jingle of the bell on the door when he opens it. He treads very softly, footsteps gentle on the weary gray tile, moseying from flower to flower like he has nowhere to be and no one to meet once he arrives. All of him looks soft, from the fall of his hair over his forehead to the soft curve of his full lips in a neutral smile, the sleeves of his cream cardigan pulled down past his wrists and his fingertips that worry the petals of the bouquet he stands admiring. Clusters of sharp silver piercings decorating the shells of each ear stand out as the sole facet of his being that isn't soft. Jihoon clears his throat.

“Can I help you find anything today, sir?”

His eyes are pretty, a gaze that sparkles with sun even under the plain lighting in the shop and the gray skies outside, and they only grow more so when he smiles, a lopsided grin that showcases a set of pearly teeth, straight in a charmingly off-kilter way. Jihoon can tell when he extends his hand that his palms are soft, has seen and felt enough flower petals to know just how supple without ever having to touch. 

“I'm looking for gardenias,” he says, and his voice is something like a chime on the wind, the music rolling over a vibrant green hill somewhere Jihoon will never get to set foot. “Do you have any?”

“Uh,” Jihoon chokes, stutters, a blunder in his element. He tugs the strings of his apron tighter to pull his focus back. “If you’ll follow me right this way.”

Though he requests it, he's still a little shocked when the man obediently files behind him to be led wherever Jihoon is taking him, silent as ever as he pads along in leisurely pursuit. Never in his life has Jihoon been so self-conscious of the way his back looks, the shape of his shoulders, the ugly knot securing his apron. He knows there's a green stain somewhere on the back of this shirt, and he hopes to god it isn't visible, but he's sure it must be. White flowers rise in his line of sight to rescue him from impending nerves, beautiful petals curled out in wide arcs.

“Here they are,” he says with a flourish of the hand, turning back around to face his customer and hide his ugly stain. The guy smiles without teeth now, gentle and full of admiration, and Jihoon thinks this guy is far more fit to work in this flower shop now than he himself ever was.

“They're so pretty,” he muses, tugging at a stem to pull the bloom just a little closer. Usually it bothers Jihoon to see people do that, but now he feels more like he's witnessing something meant for gifted eyes only. “I haven't seen them in a while, so I needed to see a reference again.”

“A reference?” Jihoon pieces through vocabulary in his head, reasons his way to rusty conclusions that should be so much easier. “Are you an artist?” A breezy chuckle slips through his lips, dances on the air in a soothing melody that Jihoon’s heartbeat almost drowns out altogether.

“A kind of artist,” the man tells him. He nods at the flowers, a small motion that seems much bigger. “I'd like a few of these, if that's okay.” 

“Of course it’s okay,” Jihoon sputters, and he's gathering a little bundle almost before he's been told how many to gather, muted laughter sifting through his ears like sugar through a sieve.

He wraps them up nicely in light pink tissue paper before presenting them, tied at the center with a bright ribbon of red and an overdone bow, and he takes in the big smile he receives as gratitude with more appreciation than he's ever accepted any monetary payment, chest tight and fit to burst. Once the flowers have been successfully given, he waits patiently for his customer to leave him, but he doesn't go for a long time, only sits still in wait for something unseen, teeth gnawing quietly at his bottom lip. Jihoon feels his skin staining pink like the pretty tissue paper around the flowers.

“I'm sorry,” the man says at last, finding Jihoon’s eyes with his, so shiny and entrancing, “but can I ask you something?” Why would he possibly be apologizing, Jihoon wonders. It's not every day a customer makes him feel like he can love his job again.

“What is it?”

“Do you have any tattoos?” 

Admittedly, the question catches him off guard. He hadn't been particularly expecting much of anything, but a question about tattoos truly came out of left field. Those sleeves catch his eye again, soft and nearly white, thick and folding from shoulder to knuckles, and he starts to put a few puzzle pieces into a semblance of shape between his ears, connect a few small dots with wavering lines. In his mind, he starts to see them, different sorts of sleeves that stick around even when clothes have gone.

“I don't.”

“I see.” His eyes smile, a lovely crinkle at the corners that really makes them shine. “Have you ever thought about getting one?”

“I haven’t.” Jihoon waits for him to say something further, but he doesn't quite look on the cusp of it. “Why do you ask?”

“Well,” he begins, and now his cheeks are pink, and something about it makes Jihoon feel good, “I don't really want this to sound as weird as I know it will, but you have beautiful skin, and I think one would look really nice on you.”

“You think so?” Jihoon mumbles, tossing a glance at his own skin. He's never thought it was particularly nice, especially not where it stains red and cracks around his knuckles, but maybe he just doesn't know what to look for.

“I'm positive.” After a moment of careful digging through pockets and wallets, a card is in Jihoon’s hand, dark slate with a curling cyan design arcing up the side. “If you ever decide you’d like one, please give me a call,” he says, and with a final smile, he is on his way out the door. Soft and gentle and muted, a dream is always a dream. He floats out the very same way he floated in.

Jihoon tucks the card deep in his pocket and doesn't look at it until he's home from work, nervous knees tucked under his chin on the couch while he fishes it out. Joshua Hong, the name says, a pretty name for a pretty man. He pores over the rest, soaking in every detail up to the trim stenciled on the border. Rosebud Tattoo and Body Art. There's a street address. There's a phone number. Jihoon fits his hand around his phone and thinks about calling it, but in the end, he doesn't.

He waits. Joshua said to call if he thinks about getting a tattoo, so he thinks about it. While he works, he wonders what might be something he could want, something that would look nice and appropriate for someone his age. Flowers are an obvious first choice. He's always around them, and at his very core, he still loves them despite how frustrated he gets trimming their ugly green stalks, pruning away wilted brown petals. If he's going to have something on his body forever, it may as well be a flower.

It's almost four weeks later when he finally calls, heart pounding in his throat while he listens to that monotonous ringing and waits for the line to be picked up. He runs through his planned script in his head while he waits, but when it flies out the window the second he hears a click on the other end, he's not surprised.

“Hello?” 

That voice is just as melodic as he recalls it from a month ago, impossible to mistake for any other sound. After speaking its first word, it waits patiently for Jihoon to give something back, a stretching silence buffered with the light crackle of static. Jihoon coughs once.

“Is this Joshua?”

“That's me,” says the man on the phone with a small laugh, both strange and familiar. “How can I help you?”

“I was, uh,” he stumbles, wetting his lips, “thinking about getting a tattoo.”

“Ah, really?” Joshua sounds surprised, only mildly, and just a little glad. It's been a long time since a voice has turned Jihoon to jelly like that. “Would you like to come in for a consultation, then?”

“Uh, sure.”

“I'm available most of the afternoon this coming Thursday. Does that work for you?”

“It…” Jihoon gazes at his calendar from across the room, reminds himself what day Thursday is. Thursday, Thursday. He doesn't think he's got anything but work until three. “It does.”

“What time do you think you can make it? I'll be in the shop ‘til seven.” Jihoon wishes he’d prepared himself for so many questions before calling. His brain has always been slow at stumbling through them when he's nervous, worse when he's on the phone. Now is a nightmare.

“I think I can be there by four,” he blurts.

“Great.” He can imagine Joshua smiling over the phone with stunning clarity, lips in a smooth curve against the receiver, eyes squeezed into thin crescents and shining endlessly. How bizarre to recall something so clearly when you've never once seen it. “You have the address, right?” Jihoon fumbles for the card, scans for something that looks enough like an address to count.

“I have it.”

“Alright,” Joshua hums. “And what's the name I should write this appointment under?”

“Uh, Jihoon.” After a few seconds, Joshua laughs. It's low and gentle, soft and fleeting. Jihoon doesn't feel like he's the butt of a joke.

“A last name to go with that?”

“Oh, sorry. It's Lee.”

“Well then, Mr. Lee,” he says brightly, “I'll see you on Thursday.”

“See you,” Jihoon replies, and then his ears are full of nothing but dial tone, long and loud and terribly grating after a voice that sounds so much like honey.

When Thursday arrives, Jihoon is more nervous than he has ever been in his adult life, swearing every time he accidentally lets a flower slip from his grasp, a scissor blade shear too near his fingers. Customers gawk as he bustles around in a nervous rage until three o’clock, when he takes his nervous rage outside the shop and into the car. His boss tells him he shouldn't get so angry at the flowers, at least not when guests are in the store, but he's yet to comply so far, and today will certainly not be the day. Seated behind the wheel, he scrambles for his phone, types in the address and inhales a few cool breaths to calm his nerves. They almost work.

In his worrying about going to the right place, he gets lost on the way there, turned around on a street lined in green he's never seen before, sky a taunting crystal blue above him while he drives in circles to find his way back out. It takes him eons to retrace his steps, stressed sweat beading on the back of his neck, but he does eventually, and with not three minutes remaining until four in the afternoon, he steps gingerly through the doorway of the tattoo parlor, every exhale heavy on his lips.

Sunlight falls in soft arcs through the windows, capturing stray dust motes as they float through the air. Jihoon has always pictured tattoo parlors as dark places, sharp and dangerous, but this place reminds him more of a library, soft carpets and a loveseat in the waiting room, quiet music drifting out of speakers he can't see. A young woman stands ready at a small counter in the room’s corner, eyes bright, arms covered shoulder to wrist in pictures he hasn't got the attention span to look at.

“Afternoon, sir,” she chirps, flipping a braid behind her shoulder. “How can I help you?”

“I have an appointment,” he rushes, “with Joshua. At four.” It drives him crazy how she flips through the little appointment book like they have all the time on the world.

“Lee?” she asks with a smile.

“Yes,” he nearly hisses, cramming his hands into his pockets so they can't shake.

“Great!” she says, then points her pen at a large entryway on the wall to her right. “Just go through there and take a left down the hall, and he'll be in the room on your right.”

“Thanks,” Jihoon coughs, and then he turns on his heel and heads down the hall, heart slamming into his ribs.

When he arrives at the room in question, Joshua doesn't notice, too busy looking out the window on the opposite wall. Today, he's wearing a mint green sweater even though it's starting to get a little too warm for sweaters, and the metal studs in his ears glitter like stars in the afternoon light. Even from behind, he looks like a dream, an angel, both and neither. Jihoon raps his fist on the doorframe, knuckles stinging with each knock, and it echoes through the room forever. Joshua’s shoulders tense up for a second before he relaxes them and starts to turn around.

“Is that Jihoon?” he asks, and Jihoon has never thought his name was beautiful before right now. His heart lodges hard in his throat, and he has to fight to push it back down.

“Yes,” he chokes out, and Joshua is fully facing him by the time he's said it, leaning back in his chair with furrowed eyebrows, like he knows he's seen the face somewhere but can't place where. His eyes spark when it dawns on him, mouth spreads into a delighted grin, hands clap together once.

“You're my florist!” he cheers. The use of the word  _ my  _ does funny things to Jihoon’s bones. “Come in, have a seat.” He keeps beaming while Jihoon takes trepidacious steps in, and it makes him want to smile back, lips curving while he sinks into the chair. Joshua’s eyes are too bright for Jihoon to meet, but he tries anyway. “I knew the voice on the phone sounded familiar. I can't believe you decided to come in.”

“Really?” Joshua nods, solemn but still grinning.

“I gave up hope after a week,” he admits, then leans forward close enough that Jihoon can eye how pretty his lashes are. “But I'm very grateful you're here. What are you thinking you want done?”

“Well, I was thinking maybe some flowers?” he says uncertainly, looking to see if Joshua’s eyes will betray anything but neutrality. “You know, since I work with them.”

“You don't see enough of them at work?” Joshua asks. Jihoon stares at him. It feels like a trick question, but it doesn't sound like one, and Joshua is still smiling a gentle smile, hands clasped over his knee and obscured by the sleeves of his sweater to the second joint on every finger.

“Are you saying I shouldn’t get flowers?” Joshua chuckles, a thin, airy thing, closes his eyes a little bit when he does.

“I specialize in floral tattoos,” he begins, “so I'll always say everyone should get flowers. I just want to make sure you're sure that's what  _ you _ want.”

“I think so,” Jihoon says, just as uncertain. “They've been a big part of my life for a long time now.”

“If you say so, then I believe you,” Joshua assures him. “You know what you want on your skin forever better than I do, right?” Jihoon thinks it's unusual how someone can maintain such a big smile for so long and never look unnatural, never look anything but perfectly lovely. “Do you have a specific flower in mind?”

“Well, my favorites are camellias,” Jihoon tells him, “so maybe those?”

“Oh, really?” Joshua nods, smile still soft on his lips, pen curling over the paper of his notepad while he writes. “Camellias are a very loving flower,” he hums, and Jihoon wonders what he should say back, sweat clamming up his palms until Joshua looks him in the eyes again. “Where would you like them, and how big do you think you want them to be?”

“Uh, about this size,” he guesses, making a circle with his hands, fingers shaking because he hadn't thought in enough depths about all these details and isn't ready to give any of his answers in time, “and I'm not really sure where I want it yet.” He holds his breath for ten seconds over long enough to get to his heart. “Where do you think it would look good?”

“What do I think?” Joshua presses his lips out of their smile and into a line, and when he scans over Jihoon, up and down, over his shoulders and under his chin, Jihoon feels like he can see everything. The pearls of sweat gathering on the back of his neck, the heart caught midway in his trachea, the brittle bones fit to snap under the pressure of his nerves. He feels so much more vulnerable than just naked, laid wide out on the table for inspection, but he can't decide if he hates it completely or if Joshua makes it okay.

“Well,” Joshua begins after a while, clearing his throat, “I did tell you you have pretty skin, so I think it’ll look nice no matter where it is, but especially somewhere like… here?” His hand finds his chest, just above where his heart would be, fingers playing by the collarbone. “It might hurt a little, but I think it would look nice in this spot.”

“If you think it's a good idea, then I'll get it there.”

“You're really easy, huh?” He scribbles in his notepad for a moment before noticing Jihoon’s slack jaw and looking back up at him with wide eyes, extending a worried hand to his knee. “Sorry, that didn't sound great. I didn't mean it in a bad way.” Jihoon’s cheeks burn a childish red at the palm resting on his leg, warm and gentle and soft as expected. “I'm just not very good at arguing, so it's a relief when customers don't want to fight with me on things.”

“Do you have people argue with you a lot?” The thought is bizarre, like picking a fight with a lamb. Jihoon can't even imagine it.

“Occasionally,” Joshua tells him with a grin, clasping his hands over his notes. “So, when were you looking to have this done? We have quite a few openings in the next two weeks.”

“I guess… does a week from today work?” 

“A week from today works perfectly,” Joshua says, penciling another note at the corner of his paper. “You have my card still, right? Send me an email, and we can be in touch about the design until you come back in.”

“Alright,” Jihoon says with a stiff nod, and Joshua is looking at him like they've said everything that needs to be said and it's time to go, so he shuffles back to his feet and nods. “Well, uh, thank you.”

“No, thank  _ you _ ,” Joshua says, and he sounds like he means it more than Jihoon’s ever heard anyone mean anything, voice silver in the golden glow pouring in through the window. “See you next week.” He wiggles his fingers in a delicate wave, long and pretty and nice, and Jihoon floats out the door and back down the corridor in its wake, brain convinced he's somewhere deep in a dream.

Jihoon lets the week drip by in a haze, pinked clouds filtering everything that passes before him. When he thinks about seeing Joshua again, he smiles without meaning to, unintentionally, more than he ever has at work before. His boss tells him it's creepy, his customers leave with pink cheeks, and he's never been so elated to see flowers fitted into vases. Someone cuts him off on his way out of the parking lot after he’s clocked out for the day, and while it does bulge out the angry veins in his neck, it isn’t quite enough to fling him into a stew of rage like usual. 

The shop looks exactly the same when he arrives, and he doesn’t know why he was expecting it to look just a little bit different today, but he’s surprised to see how perfectly unaltered it is, some unreal place transplanted into the regular world from a universe far-off and fantastic. It still looks just like a library inside, still lined in soft browns and bathed in gentle stripes of golden sunlight from the windows, and the same girl is standing attendant at the desk when he walks in the door with a quiet jingle. A weightless sort of  déjà vu creeps around his shoulders while he plods over to her.

“Here to see Joshua?” she asks before he gets to say anything. He wants to defend himself, say he’s here for an appointment and not just to lay eyes on the guy, but she probably knows that already, so he just nods instead and allows her to point him in the direction of a room he already knows how to find. 

Once again, Joshua’s back is turned to him when he reaches the door, forever occupied gazing out the window. Parts of Jihoon, large parts, wish he didn’t have to disturb the scene, wish he could see the expression on Joshua’s face while he’s staring off into the beyond like that, but as the laws of the universe have laid out for him, he can’t have either. Without warning, a loud sneeze erupts from his nose and resounds through the room. Joshua nearly jumps out of his seat before turning around, face melting into an easy grin.

“You scared me,” he breathes, hesitant hand hovering right over his heart. He must really be fond of cardigans, because he’s wearing one again today, dark gray and drawn well pasts his wrists, layered over a thin white shirt that hugs him close. The few steps he takes toward the doorway see light glinting off the metal in his ears like muted sparks of fireworks, and his hand is so soft when he takes Jihoon’s. “How are you?”

“I’m good,” Jihoon coughs, and Joshua is already leading him deeper into the room and easing him back into the chair. A brief shuffle through a single folder later, he’s sliding a thin square of paper out carefully and offering it forward for Jihoon to look at. “Here’s the template for the tattoo,” he explains. “Are you okay with the final design?” Jihoon nods without delay.

“It looks great.” He might have said it even if he didn’t mean it, but he does mean it. Something about the design is so special, halfway between looking like a simple artist’s rendition and looking like real blossoms plucked straight from the shelves of the store. There are three in the cluster, one large and two small, delicately curled around one another, and when Jihoon looks at it, he can’t think of anything he’d prefer to have etched permanently on his skin. “It looks perfect.”

“Don’t get too crazy,” Joshua chuckles, hand waving the compliment away. “Anyhow, if you’re satisfied with it, we can go ahead and get started.”

“Yeah,” Jihoon tells him. “Sure. Yeah.” Were it not for the way that tinkling laugh made his chest feel a size too small in the most likable way, he could light himself on fire.

The chair is warm against his back when Joshua tugs the neck of his shirt down around his shoulder to bare the skin. “Cold,” he warns, seconds before a cotton ball soaked with something icy lands near his collarbone to make small circles around the spot reserved for his tattoo. Jihoon tries not to stare too much while Joshua goes through the motions of getting his skin ready to take the ink, but it’s hard when there’s little else in the room to grab his attention beyond floral sketches lining the walls and a shelf pushed into the far corner bearing a million little bottles of ink in different colors. Every time Joshua’s head moves, the studs in his ears glitter like silver meteors.

“Alright,” he says at last. “We’re all ready to go.” When Jihoon breaks from his focus on staring at the outline of the window, he sees Joshua shrugging off his cardigan and holds his breath. There they are, he thinks.

Or there they would have been, those tattoos, but there’s nothing. His arms are just regular, unmarked arms, perfectly clean and covered in spotless smooth skin all the way from the wrist to what he sees of the shoulder. The exhale drips from his lips with a vague color of disappointment, settling hard in his chest. Maybe he had no reason to expect there would be any tattoos covering his arms, but he always had this image of tattoo artists almost having an entire second skin, crafted from new fabrications of beautiful pictures, and he was a little hopeful he’d get to see Joshua’s. Of course not. One item at a time, Joshua is kicking his expectations to studded gravel.

“It’ll sting a little bit,” he says gently, and then Jihoon feels the needle touch him, hears its cranky little buzz. It feels about like he expected a needle being dragged through skin to feel, but the dreamy smile on Joshua’s lips cancels it out well. He only realizes he’s been staring when Joshua takes a glance up at him with worried brows. “Something wrong?” he asks. Jihoon tries to swallow down the red swimming to his face, but it’s no use. “Does it hurt too much?”

“No,” Jihoon coughs. “Just, uh, your arms.” What an absolute numbskull thing to say. Jihoon thinks about burying himself while Joshua traces the next arc with his lips pressed into a line.

“I usually get cold,” he explains, “but it’s more comfortable for me to work if my arms are free.” He lifts the needle after finishing out one more swooping line Jihoon can’t see. “I can put the cardigan back on if you’re uncomfortable.”

“It’s not that,” Jihoon bumbles, “I just expected you would, you know…” Silence sits on the air for a few deadly seconds before Joshua’s frustrated pout crinkles into a wafer of a smile.

“You thought I would have sleeves?” he ventures. Jihoon sighs, and the smile stays present on Joshua’s face while he lowers the needle again. The soft buzz has started to sound something like music. “Well, maybe that wasn’t crazy of you to think, but tough luck for you, I guess. My arms are just plain old arms.”

“Do you have any tattoos at all?”

“Oh, yeah,” he hums. “Just not on my arms.” 

“Where are they?” Jihoon winces a little where the needle traces closer by his collarbone, but the delicate intensity in Joshua’s eyes distracts him. “Can I see them?” Joshua lifts the needle to wipe excess ink off the tip and laughs, a short thing that melts right into the air.

“You’ll have to buy me dinner if you want to see them,” he says, resuming his patient task of painstaking tracing. Jihoon’s jaw goes embarrassingly limp, and it only takes a minute for Joshua to notice, for the easy grin to slide into oblivion. “That was incredibly inappropriate,” he mutters, eyes wide and very pointed at his work and not on Jihoon’s face. “I’m so sorry.” 

“No, I uh,” Jihoon coughs, resigning to look up at the ceiling. His face isn’t quite warm yet, but he can feel that his neck is, feel his cheeks are likely soon to join. For a long time, there is no sound beyond the buzz of Joshua’s needle as he continues with his careful work, no sight but streaks of pale afternoon sunlight dripping by across the speckled ceiling. A slow breeze from the air conditioner sends ripples through the curtains draped around the window, and the white flutter of it is enough for a moment to trick Jihoon into thinking he’s half asleep. He’s pulled back ashore by the soft hiss of breath that rattles through Joshua’s teeth.

“Jesus,” he wheezes. “I really don’t know what I was thinking.” Jihoon winces just a little where the needle creeps closest to his collarbone. “Please forget I said that.”

“Well.” Jihoon chokes in the middle of his thoughts and blanks out while his lips keep moving. “Can I?” Joshua pauses.

“Sorry?”

“Can I?” His voice sounds so far off and diluted, but Joshua’s confused hum of breath in return sounds so close. After a moment, his hands resume their business.

“Can you what?” he asks, voice feathers on the wind.

“Buy you dinner.” Hands stop once more.

“Sorry?” he repeats.

“Is that a no?” Jihoon doesn’t know where the sudden jolt of nerve came from, but he’s intent on riding it until he crashes, looks Joshua dead in the face, in those soft doe eyes.

“It’s not… You want to?” The flick of his gaze between Jihoon’s face and chest flounders before eventually deciding the chest is more important, though his eyebrows remain set in an awkward draw.

“If I can.”

“If you really want to see my tattoos, I’ll show them to you.” Another arc of ink melts into Jihoon’s skin. “I won’t really make you buy me dinner.”

“But I’d like to.” 

“Really?”

“Is that okay?”

Joshua breathes out through his nose. “Sorry,” he says, “but I need to just focus on finishing this tattoo for right now or it’s gonna be a disaster.” Without another word, he presses his needle back down and keeps on tracing.

After a full wordless hour, Jihoon’s enthusiasm is waning alongside his spike of boldness, and he’s working extremely hard not to let himself get too embarrassed, but it’s hard when Joshua is so stunningly stoic working on him. What a mistake. He didn’t even really want this tattoo in the first place, and then he just had to let his mouth go off on its own. If only Joshua didn’t act so much like a dream, maybe he could’ve focused more on staying in reality. He can already see the angry life he’s going to squeeze out of the flowers when he gets in tomorrow.

“Cold.” Joshua’s voice comes as a lullaby to reel him back awake seconds before a chilled swath of cotton swipes over the exposed stretch of his chest. Joshua eyes the design for a moment before his eyes crinkle in a smile. “Alright. All done.”

“Really?”

“Yep.” He grabs a little mirror from a nearby shelf and positions it so Jihoon can see the folds of the petals over his fair skin. “How about it?” Jihoon hums while he looks at it.

“I really like it.” It looks even more real somehow as a finished product, like there’s a chance it might bloom separate from his skin and get blown away by the breeze. He reaches a ginger hand back to stroke over the lines and is more than a little surprised to find it feels like plain flat skin rather than silky petals.

“Do you want me to take a picture of it for you?”

“Uh, sure.”

Now that the silence is over, it’s only weirder. Jihoon waits for Joshua to say something else about whether or not they really might have dinner together, but he doesn’t. He takes a picture of the tattoo, hands over a little bottle of ointment, rattles off a few basic rules for caring after a new tattoo. Silence, Jihoon knows, is as effective a form of rejection as any. He consoles himself with the thought that someone who stepped out of heaven and onto earth was never much in his league to begin with, but it still stings just a touch more than the needle had.

“Before you go,” Joshua says as he ushers Jihoon out the door, “take this.” Jihoon looks at his extended hand. It’s the same business card he’s already got stashed in the folds of his wallet.

“I already have your card.”

“But this one has my personal phone number on it.” Pink is everywhere on his cheeks, and Jihoon thinks it really suits him. Something very floral about it. “If you were serious about dinner.”

“Oh.” Jihoon takes a sharper inhale than intended. “Oh.”

“Have a nice day, Jihoon,” Joshua tells him with a small wave. “Don’t forget to apply the ointment every time you shower. Hope to see you again.” He disappears before Jihoon formulates something decent to say back, which is just as well, because he certainly wasn’t anywhere close.

He only waits one day this time to punch the number into his phone and give it a ring, maybe because he’s afraid he’ll wake up and find those ten digits no longer carefully printed under the car’s namesake. While they talk, he mostly blacks out, only wakes up in time to hear the most crucial details and that yes, they are having dinner together. Hanging up brings on a new wave of worries, particularly how Jihoon has not been on a date in a long time and doesn’t really remember how they work. Is it a date? That’s another worry. The raw adolescence of it only translates into stress that translates into excess levels of frustration at work his boss is almost relieved to see return. Many a flower stem is unwittingly crushed in the next two weeks.

They agree to have dinner on a Friday evening, and as Jihoon stands waiting just inside the restaurant’s door, he feels like he’s swallowed a whole box of golf balls. The evening air coming in each time a new patron enters is just cool enough to trace flocks of goosebumps all over his skin, straight through the crisp button-down he picked from his closet. Looking at the rest of the incoming crowd, he feels overdressed, and that only augments his nerves, but there’s no way he’s got time to drive home before Joshua arrives. Joshua arriving is also stressing him out because it hasn’t happened yet and he’s not sure how ready he’ll be when it does.

He isn’t ready, of course. How could he ever be? Joshua floats through the door like a beautiful phantom, bones made of daydreams and skin the feathered wisps of half-fantasized memories. Jihoon breathes out slowly to lighten the load on his lungs, but it doesn’t do much to help the way his skin burns where he has flowers living on it now. He takes comfort in the way Joshua is dressed, also wearing a dress shirt even if it is softened by the tawny sweater drowning him. A grin spreads Joshua’s lips when he spots Jihoon by the door, and his chest seizes promptly back up.

“You look nice,” Joshua tells him. His hand is resting on Jihoon’s shoulder, and it’s warm. Jihoon gropes around in his head for the words.

“So do you,” he lands on. They stare at each other in the quaking silence of the entry for a single minute before Jihoon coughs and says, “Well, I’ll go tell the host we’re here.”

Dinner is a little bit awkward. Jihoon should have known it would be; he’s always been a little mediocre with conversation, and he’s only gotten worse under the soft pressure of Joshua’s eyes. Even so, Joshua smiles and talks back with an eager tongue, words little above stardust on the air, glinting in the light of the single bulb hanging over their table. His whole frame melts into the music rumbling softly from the speakers in each corner of the ceiling, eyes ever crinkled into dizzying little crescents.

“Do you want to go somewhere else?”

Joshua asks it after they’ve both mostly cleaned their plates and before their server has ambled by to ask whether they’d like dessert or a check. It takes Jihoon several slow beats to work through the question, through the low tone and the look in Joshua’s eyes, heavy but not. Every inch of him is sparkling like moonbeams.

“Go somewhere?” A nod. “Like where?”

“My apartment.”

Jihoon’s skin is really burning now, right where his heart is beating at the back of it, and he doesn’t know how he could ever stand to have such a stiff shirt on him and buttoned all the way to the top. He adjusts his weight in his seat while he picks his way past the dryness in his mouth, but by the time he’s resituated, it still isn’t gone. No matter how many times he lets his jaw hang open and snap back closed, he can’t force a word out. After a while, Joshua reaches across the table to lay a palm on his forearm and speaks two words with his shining eyes.  _ Let’s go _ .

The apartment is dark when they wander through the door, long relieved of the sunlight that would have come through the curtained windows in the den. Joshua leads Jihoon by the hand without turning a light on, a pale gray specter always just far enough ahead to be a slice of imagination if not for the subtle loop of fingers around Jihoon’s left wrist. He lets his shoes slide off while they glide through, a stunted trail of crumbs to guide him back from wherever they’re going whenever he decides he ought to leave.

When they reach the bedroom at the far back, Joshua flicks on the lamp on the bedside dresser, and it throws a muted yellow glow that crawls to every corner but doesn’t put much color in anything. Before Jihoon is adjusted to the light, he’s being eased back onto the edge of the bed, soft comforter giving way atop a firmer mattress. Joshua is still standing in front of him, hands barely touching the spots on Jihoon’s shoulders where they hold him steady. 

“Are you ready?” Joshua asks him. Jihoon can’t help the way he gulps. 

“Ready for what?”

“To see my tattoos.” Right. The tattoos. Jihoon closes his eyes and breathes out the lump of concrete stuck between his lungs.

“I’m ready.” Joshua smiles, and without further ado, he is tugging his sweater over his head and unbuttoning the shirt beneath.

The number of layers is mocking him. First falls the sweater, thick and brown into a pool on the floor, and next the button-down, carefully folded before being placed atop the dresser by the base of the lamp. Beneath both is a spotless undershirt, and Joshua certainly takes his time removing it, careful not to draw even a single wrinkle on its way off. Just as he’s almost gotten it shrugged off, he turns around.

Jihoon regrets the volume of the breath he sucks in, but he doesn’t focus on it. He can’t. There, right in front of him, Joshua’s back is a garden. Vines crawl around his shoulder blades, punctuated at each curve with lovely little flowers in shades of lilac and cherry. By the base of his neck, crowning the tops of his shoulders, all up and down his spine and curling around to his stomach and chest, there are flowers everywhere, big and small, delicate petals folding over each other amid winding webs of green. Before he thinks about it, he reaches out to feel at one of the blooms with a fingertip, and it’s only when Joshua jumps that he remembers he’s looking at a person and not a piece of art.

“They’re beautiful,” Jihoon mutters, tracing his way up the side of Joshua’s spine. “You must really love flowers.” Joshua laughs a little bit and turns around while he does. There’s a trio of camellias alive over the center of his chest, spreading like wings between his collarbones.

“You love them, too, don’t you?” His eyes twinkle when he says it. Jihoon knows he used to love them, and looking at Joshua now, he’s convinced he still might. An idle hand finds its way to the warmest part of his chest.

“We match, a little,” he muses. Joshua touches the same spot on himself, fans his fingers out to graze over the rest of the flowers.

“It’d be hard for us not to, as long as you got flowers,” he says, tapping a beat on his sternum. “I have so many.” The hand travels lower, pats his thigh. “I have them on my legs, too.” Jihoon eyes him, thin smile curling the corners of his mouth. Something about the dim glow of the light is getting to him.

“Can I see?”

The sheets are cool to the touch, but they warm up quick enough, prickles of gooseflesh on Jihoon’s arms and back fading in the wake of Joshua’s sailing hands. His thumb glides over the flowers on Jihoon’s skin over and over, smoothing the fake petals out into infinity, and his mouth ghosts in quiet trails not far away. The way the light catches the crown of his hair looks like a halo, and the pictures laced across his back are wings. 

“You really do have beautiful skin,” Joshua mutters into the side of his neck, and it makes Jihoon’s whole body buzz. His lips drift lower, brush about the lines looping over Jihoon’s chest. “It looks incredible on you.”

“Complimenting yourself?” Jihoon feels the smile against his body, but try as he might, he can’t see anything through the darkness. Joshua keeps kissing him.

“No matter what, it would have looked incredible,” he hums, “but I’m glad I got to be the one to do it.” He props himself up on an elbow and gazes at Jihoon with lidded eyes. Even now, the planes of his body look blurred around the edges, soft beyond touch. Jihoon is almost surprised when he reaches out to flatten his palm on Joshua’s shoulder and it doesn’t melt right through. “Guess it was a good idea to give you my card after all.”

“Do you not usually give people your card?”

“You were the first.”

“Really?” Joshua shrugs.

“Sometimes you just have that gut feeling you better do something.” He draws a lazy circle on Jihoon’s elbow. “And I thought you were beautiful.” A slow breath pushes forth through Jihoon’s nose while he tries not to get dizzy. “But if I knew you would go to dinner with me, I would’ve just asked.”

“I’m glad I got the tattoo, anyway,” Jihoon mumbles, nearly whispers. “I like it.”

“It’s a lucky thing the flower shop I usually visit was closed for renovations, I guess.” The kisses resume, and Jihoon is afraid he might drip out of reality at any moment. “I like you a lot more than my old florist.”

Jihoon sifts his hands through Joshua’s hair, back pressed to the smooth sheets beneath him. In the dark, it’s hard to hang onto reality, hard to deny that Joshua is just a figment of the imagination. The flowers on Joshua’s chest are three stars shining bright against the dimness, tethering him to the present and to the beyond, filling his lungs to their breaking point.

“I think you’re more suited to being a florist than I am.” He doesn’t know why he says it, but the thought occurs to him in the very same breath that it makes its way onto the air. Joshua eyes him from under a veil of pretty lashes. “You like flowers more than I do.”

“Maybe you think so,” Joshua allows. “But I think you love them more than I ever will.”

As he says it, he traces once more the design he inked on Jihoon’s skin, fingers soft as roses where they sweep around every curve of every petal, dip by the slopes of his collarbones. The rhythm of it is comfortable in the same way a heartbeat is, and he lets himself drown in it while he follows those very same arcs with his eyes. Maybe that is the truth after all. He thinks about it, thinks about the way he used to grin when he saw a rose in full bloom. Maybe it is the truth, indeed.

Maybe it always has been.

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello christ almighty. i started this in like june and have been very very bad about working on it so only just now am i finally getting it done. and it's been a month since i last posted anything again so yeah. but that's because i'm busy and also not exactly in a good place and writing has been so hard for me for a little bit here.... but anyway! i saw the prompt for angry florist and soft tattoo artist and i KNEW i had to do it for 2ji bc a) it works so well b) i love 2ji and c) the 2ji tag (like many other unfortunate tags) is STARVED. so here it is! and i hope u like it! imo 2ji's best point is that josh is the perfect height to kiss wz on the head so i'm a total jackass for having no forehead kiss in here but whatever... gotta live with what we've got i guess. i think i've talked enough now.... so thank you so much for reading!!! i rly rly hope you enjoyed bc 2ji deserve ur love even if u don't think they do. as always, feedback is greatly appreciated! see u again soon maybe!


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